Mayer Spivack (1936 - 2011) is @MayerSpivack on Twitter. He was a consultant and advisor on organizational behavior, innovation, and learning, based near Boston, Massachusetts. He was also an artist working in a variety of media. All writing and artworks presented here are the original work and are the copyrighted property of Mayer Spivack. Nothing on this weblog is aggregated from other sources. Reasonable use involving copying with attribution, and limited sharing not for profit, are allowed. Your comments are invited. This blog is now maintained by his son, Nova Spivack. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your interest.

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2 posts categorized "prison design"

April 18, 2009

Was It Torture that the Bush administration lawyers
allowed, within ‘limits’? My first question is how could they have known if it
was or was not torture? Had they tried the various techniques on themselves or
on each other in a specially equipped legal dungeon with a dispassionate group,
twelve of their peers, observing, taking snapshots, and helping to form a
decision? It is common to expect experts in any professional discipline to have
some direct experience living, or at least working within the niche where they
advise or decide.

Now that so many people worldwide are out of jobs, as a
nation we may be grateful for the visibility of strong, hands-on famous
role-models teaching us how to get and keep a job.

I suggest that any tribunal that seeks to pass judgment on
the people who allowed torture, and those who did the torturous acts, make it
their goal to give these folks their old jobs back—with slightly altered job
descriptions. Put them back to work as evaluators who are in a proper position
to decide just where the line is that demarcates torture from uncomfortable piffle.
Their daily work, on a contract of uncertain duration—(to assure their ‘security’)
would oblige them to subject themselves, and each other, to the same
experiences they once had decreed for others. At the end of that work they will
be able to render opinions and judgments of their own, on precisely where that
line aught to be drawn.

These serious legal issues are at the core of national and
worldwide debates that only seasoned field experts can hope to sort out for us.
We trusted them and depended upon them when they made their initial
determinations, and we should continue show our trust and loyalty and support now.
In a sentence, our hats are off to the lot of you as your head(s) are off to the dungeons,
and keep up the great work!

November 05, 2007

Fear, isolation, and a sense of numbing helplessness characterize the nursing home, the mental hospital and other institutional experiences for the majority of inmates. To enter a hospital, especially a mental hospital or a nursing home, either as a visitor or a patient, is to encounter an environment that has no equal in barrenness anywhere in our culture except for the prisoner's cell.

These environments may be described as dis-integrated or degraded because they lack wholeness; they are incomplete. Because the ordinary everyday settings for behavior are missing, they cannot adequately support the great range of human activities and behaviors that are associated with everyday life and particularly with the recovery process. Most institutions force inmates to ‘kill time’ without purpose. More typically and destructively, institutional environments may further impair the patients' faith in their own competence to take care of themselves and live normal independent lives. Prolonged institutionalization or hospitalization, especially in a mental hospital, nursing home, or prison may seriously impair the inmate’s mental health, as individual’s responsibilities and social behaviors fall away.

Psychiatry and psychology in particular, and medicine in general, all lack a clear vision or theory of mental health and ‘wellness’, as distinct from illness, that could inform and enrich the lives of patients in their care. Since the earliest records of institutional mental health treatment there have been relatively few reform revolutions during which the quality of the patients' experience, their environment, and their care were given enriching humane attention.

Blogroll of honor + Websites

The Alex Foundation- Home pageIrene Pepperberg studies cognitive process, teaching and learning in birds. She is problably the most recognized researcher on avian cognition in the world. Alex, her now famous long-time research subject and 'collaborator' recently died at half his life expectancy. Now Wart and Griffin are her collaborators. They are saying and doing things we used to believe that only small children, great apes, and dolphins could do. Her brilliant work deserves better funding.

Minding the PlanetNova is a cognitive scientist and high-tech entrepreneur working on technologies that overcome our information overload. He has founded companies and is now developing interactive internet software, TWINE, that we all need. His thinking covers a great range. He is my Son.